So With all the previous in mind I set off, to find myself a Yamaha XS 650 for my first Project.
My goal was to get get one cheap and so I found myself almost buying a project bike which was already disassembled, but complete…………not , a lot of parts I wasn’t going to use were missing, but also the license plate was gone.
Reason for me not to to buy the bike, but as I was ready to leave the seller told me he had a complete bike inside.
It was a XS 650 heritage special, in my Eyes the least attractive one built, but we agreed on the price and best thing was that the bike only had done 20.000 KM.!
So, now I had a bike ……what next?
This is where the internet comes in and searching the net proved to be a true treasure chest filled with info, tips, tricks , parts and of course Movies.
Most inspiring for me were the clips put up by Chris Chappell from the company with the same name.
Chris did a fabulous job on filming himself building his Board tracker “stout33” .
I absolutely loathed the music in the videos, but I loved his approach in taking on the work.
And building things, like a vacuum forming machine by himself.
If I wanted to build bikes this way, it meant that I had to buy a LOT of equipment!
And what’s even more important : a place to put it all!
I found a place to my liking and started searching for used machines.
I already had a compressor, Mig welder, power tools and hand tools.
So I went looking for a Lathe, mill, Tig welder, motorcycle lift, workbenches, pipe bender and so on.
I soon found out that a lot stuff could be bought new for a price, so low that I wasn’t even considdering second hand.
However some things are expensive so I opted for 2 things:
Buying it for cash or building it myself.
Because building takes time I bought most of the things, but I decided to build a powder coating oven myself. This is because I could not find one in the size I wanted it.
